As I write this editorial, I’m exactly three months into my tenure at the Texas Observer. In that time, I’ve had the good fortune to hear readers express genuine love for the state—scabs, scars, and all—and for the work of journalists like ours, who they say help make Texas a better, more informed place. I’m honored by their affection for the Observer. I’m humbled by the opportunity to be part of it. And if I’m honest, I have a healthy fear of the responsibility that comes with leading a media organization.
But a bigger fear has dwarfed that. One that infiltrated my thoughts on August 3, 2019, when a man allegedly drove 650 miles from Allen to El Paso and committed the largest massacre of Latinx people in U.S. history. The acute horror of what happened to the El Paso community deeply saddened me, as it did countless others. And, as a Latina who proudly embraces my brown skin and my cultural heritage, it also deeply frightened me.
While I’ve construed minor grievances as possibly racist slights, no person has ever explicitly harmed me or insulted me because of my ethnicity. This is an extraordinarily lucky and privileged claim. Thousands of black and brown people all over America have been marginalized, criminalized, and even killed because of their race. Still, people like to believe things are getting better—but what happened in El Paso underscores just how little has changed.
